


The Ophidiophobia Job

by Glinda, IllustratedJai



Category: Leverage, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Aliens, Big Bang Challenge, Crossover, Episode: s05e12 Wormhole X-Treme, Gate Travel, Goa'uld (Stargate), Heists, Illustrated, Multi, NID (Stargate), Saving the World, The Trust (Stargate), implied Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 12:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12935058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda, https://archiveofourown.org/users/IllustratedJai/pseuds/IllustratedJai
Summary: Leverage/Stargate SG1 Crossover. Team Leverage discover that their mark has access to lots of highly classified alien technology. Eliot calls in some help from a 'buddy in the business' and it turns out he worked for the Stargate programme. Conspiracies are discovered, bombs are defused, aliens are fought, and part of the team get stranded offworld.





	The Ophidiophobia Job

**Author's Note:**

> This is my Leverage Big Bang story. Based off the idea that semi-canonically, _Leverage_ exists in a universe with Stargates. And Eliot's been through the Stargate. (According to the DVD audio commentaries one of the 'what have they been up to between seasons' flashbacks was supposed to involve Eliot in the gateroom at the SGC but the set had been dismantled so it never happened.) I had a deep hankering for that story, so this is my take on writing it. 
> 
> Entertainingly its actually the longest thing I've written since the very first fic I ever posted on the internet, as a teenager, back in _Stargate SG1_ fandom a good 15 years ago. I hope its a much better fic than that was. (I apologise for the distinct lack of Daniel Jackson in this fic, but all these years later I STILL can't write him to save my life.)
> 
> This story is set post Season 5 for _Leverage_ but somewhere between Seasons 8  & 9 for _Stargate SG1_. I know the timelines don't really work (AT ALL) for crossing over these serieses so I've just decided to fudge it completely. And honestly I wanted to use both the Goa'uld and, more importantly, classic team SG:1.  
>  Art by the lovely [IllustratedJai](http://illustratedjai-art.tumblr.com)

 

The thing about when Vance calls him up and says, ‘I’ve got a job for you’ is that however messy things get, Eliot keeps saying yes. He’s never been squeamish about getting his hands dirty in the service of his country but it’s more than that. For all the grubby, horrible jobs they do together, the other jobs they do more than make up for it. 

Because sometimes, when Vance calls him up, he says, ‘I need you to get on the next plane to Colorado Springs, got a job for you at Cheyenne Mountain.’ And those jobs, are the best ones. Mostly he does hostage negotiation, with the occasional extraction of alien artefacts from enemy bases thrown in for variety. Who can blame him, if he really likes stealing shit from the Goa’uld? 

If he’s going to get his hands dirty, then no better cause than the safety of the whole planet.

Even after he stops doing government work beyond favours to Vance, Eliot tries to keep abreast of any rumours he hears coming out of the Mountain or from Homeland Security in general. They run a pretty tight ship on security up there – excepting _Wormhole_ -Fucking- _Xtreme_ – but there are always those who are willing to share a little gossip if they know for certain that you’ve worked in Deep-space Telemetry too. 

After all, you never know when you might have to fight an alien, its best to know what kind are in the running these days. 

~

“You’re really pretty for a bomb,” Parker says over the comms and everyone else stops talking.

Hardison is the first to rediscover his voice, and there’s a slight manic edge to his tone that tells the rest of them that his calm is definitely forced, “where is the bomb and why are you flirting with it? Does it have a timer? What kind of explosives are we talking?”

“In the roof space, because its all pretty crystals, not that I can see, a couple of pounds of C4,” Parker answers in order. 

“Crystals?” Eliot asks, a whole different level of panic rising up through him, “what do you mean by crystals?” Please, he hopes silently, let her be being metaphorical, that tech shouldn’t even be on Earth. 

“Easier if I show you,” Parker tells him. 

There’s a soft click and then all their phones beep at once, and they find themselves looking at a picture of the bomb. 

“What the hell is that?” Demands Hardison, speaking for the rest of them. 

Eliot’s heart sinks, it’s exactly what he feared, he recognises that technology instantly. 

“A whole lot of trouble,” he tells them. “Parker, I need to know exactly where you are, and I need to get there now.” 

Parker gives him precise and careful instructions on how to get up into the roof space and Eliot follows them as exactly as he can. 

“Parker,” Sophie interjects, “can you get out of there without destabilising the bomb.”

“I can get out, but Eliot can’t get in without me here to counterbalance the bomb,” Parker tells her. Eliot is close enough to see her and the bomb in the narrow roof space, and nods his acceptance to her: his shoulders are too broad. As much as he’d like her safely away, there’s no point if he can’t actually get to the bomb. 

“Can you not talk her through defusing it from there,” Nate asks his voice in full minimising collateral damage mode. 

“No, I need to see it up close, and…it’s a two-man job really,” Eliot admits. 

Once he gets himself securely in position, he examines the device, and slowly and gently, explaining what the colours mean as he goes, he begins to remove the crystals from the device in precise order. 

Over the comms Eliot can hear the quiet tapping of Hardison’s keyboard as he doubtless channels his nerves into researching the bomb’s technology. Eliot resigns himself to having to answer some very pointed questions that he’s not at liberty to answer in the near future. Presuming he and Parker don’t get themselves blown up in the meantime. 

Just as he’s pulling out the last crystal in the sequence and the device visibly powers down, Parker darts her hand into the heart of the machine and with a sharp tug pulls a small bundle of wires free and launches part of them as far from the pair of them as possible. Now that he isn’t concentrating entirely on alien technology he can see that she has a secondary device in her hands. Small and simple, it had obviously been designed to ensure the charges went off even if the main bomb got defused. 

“Like you said,” Parker tells him with a wry grin, “two person job.”

“Like I said,” he agrees, letting the adrenaline rush out of him in a couple of long shaky breaths. “We have seriously pissed someone off.”

“On the plus side,” Nate interjects, “that means we’re getting close.”

~

“On the negative side,” Hardison announces when they’ve reconvened in the warehouse they’re using as a base of operations for this job, “that means our mark has the resources and connections to know about Delmac crystals, let alone obtain enough to waste them in a bomb.”

“What kind of connections are we talking,” Nate asks, “military? Criminal? And for that matter, what exactly are ‘Delmac’ crystals?”

“They’re control crystals, they come in a variety of forms, mostly non-Terran in origin and used in ways…most of which I’m not remotely at liberty to tell you about.” Eliot admitted. “But I do have some connections of my own that I can call upon to help us out.”

“This have anything to do with something called, ‘Homeworld Security’?” Hardison asks, making finger quotes. 

Eliot closes his eyes and sighs deeply. Hardison hacks the Pentagon for fun when he’s bored. There was always a danger that he knew, but Eliot had presumed when Hardison never brought it up that he’d just never happened to stumble across it. 

“How much do you know about what they do at Cheyenne Mountain, on the floors below NORAD,” Eliot asks tentatively, bracing himself for the answer. 

Hardison stares at him, slightly agog, “No, you weren’t! You’ve not! Seriously you were part of the Stargate project and you never told us?!” He demands equal parts appalled and delighted. “There were rumours that they revived the project, that they found a way to travel somewhere other than Abydos, but nothing I could ever substantiate.”

“Stargate? Abydos?” Interjects Nate, sounding dubious.

“Big metal ring, found by archaeologist Professor Paul Langford in Egypt in 1928. Rumoured to be of great mystical or technological power, and known in certain circles to be the subject of a whole subset of cons over the intervening years.” Sophie explains to him. “There were rumours that the Nazis pursued it for years but it all seemed a little _Indiana Jones_ for my taste. It actually works? It’s really an interstellar portal?” 

Parker turns huge, delighted eyes towards Eliot and asks the inevitable question, “Are you telling me, that _Wormhole Xtreme_ is real?!”

“Dammit, Hardison,” Eliot mutters.

~

When Eliot tells them he’s got a buddy in the business, he doesn’t actually expect said buddy to turn up in person. He mostly called Carter because he’d heard she was working out of Nellis these days, and it’s decidedly easier to reach someone who isn’t working twenty odd floors below the ground. Besides, he’s somewhat reluctant to draw the attention of any of his contacts in Washington after the last time. 

So its something of a surprise when they get back to their base of operations to find Hardison and Parker playing host to not one but two members of SG-1. 

He congratulates Carter on her promotion and exchanges backwards compliments with Teal’c about each other’s hair. It hadn’t occurred to him that Teal’c shaved his head rather than being bald – the guy’s always been extraordinarily spry for a guy well over a hundred – but he entirely understands the desire to grow out your hair to mark the end of a military era.

Eliot gives it approximately ten minutes after Teal’c and Parker have lowered their respective defences before they’re firm friends. 

(Later on he catches Carter watching Parker bemusedly and deliberately catches her eye to share an eye-roll and a helpless shrug. Parker is currently hanging upside down from the ceiling and her conversation with Teal’c has somehow morphed from one about abseiling into an animated discussion of the Star Wars prequels. It’s nice to have independent confirmation of his theory.)

“It doesn’t bother you,” Nate asks Carter, “that we’re thieves?”

“Should it?” Carter asks in return, “the way I understand it, you’ve got this Robin Hood gig going on. You take down corrupt CEOs and politicians, use their own greed to redress at least some of the damage that they do. There aren’t a wide variety of jobs for someone with Spencer’s skill set outside the military. This is much better than what I feared. At least with you guys he’s doing some good.”

“That’s a refreshingly relativistic viewpoint for an Air force Officer,” Nate observes.

“Well, I did work in Washington for several years, I spent a lot of time schmoozing and arguing with politicians about funding for the programme. Between that and some senators with some _interesting_ special interests interfering with our work…” Carter shrugs, “I know from greed and corruption. I can think of a lot of people who deserve to have Leverage dropped on their heads.”

“Aaah,” notes Nate, “so if I were to offer you a choice between justice and order, your answer might not be one that the military establishment would entirely approve?”

“Rules exist for a reason,” Carter counters, “mostly those are good reasons. However, sometimes obeying bad orders is far worse than disobeying them would be. I’ve spent the last eight years of my life, fighting an alien threat to this planet that overturned 50% of everything we knew about the way the universe worked. If I hadn’t occasionally broken the rules I’d literally never have gotten anything done, would have arguably caused considerable harm to other intelligent species’ and on a couple of occasions actively failed to save the world. There has to be some flexibility while the system catches up.” 

“Colonel Carter means that if entering new territory, rules must be adapted and assisted to evolve to meet the circumstances, and ensure the wider cause of justice is served.” Observes Teal’c. 

Eliot smiles to himself, he knows from happy experience that Carter – and the rest of SG1 for that matter - rarely breaks the rules, but when she does she breaks them good and hard. 

~

“So when you told Hardison that you never know when you might have to fight an alien,” Sophie says slowly, “you had reason to believe that you actually might?”

“Kinda, yeah,” Eliot admits shyly, a sudden grin blooming across his face, “it’s not like I could just come out and admit that I had. I mean, yeah it was classified, but mainly, I don’t like to boast.”

It’s true, Sophie acknowledges. Eliot _doesn’t_ like to boast. He is ridiculously competent in a truly ridiculous variety of skills, but unless its relevant to a given situation, he pretty much never brings it up. He’ll occasionally get caught up in a competitive back and forth with Hardison, but that always plays more like an ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ scenario. If anything, Eliot is more likely to underplay his skills and experience than overplay them. 

At the same time, she understands that he’s incredibly proud of this part of his service. It’s not something he could mention casually or joke about to cover the truth. Serving his planet is something special to him, something pure and untainted by the grubbiness of the rest of his work. He’s done some truly terrible things in the service of the US Army but Sophie can tell that for all the secrecy around the Stargate project, there’s nothing about his work for them of which Eliot is ashamed. 

Sophie finds it oddly comforting knowing that. It’s still terrifying to know that they’re agreeing to step into what is essentially a black hole in the US Military system and perhaps, if necessary, even step through a wormhole to _another planet_. Still, she feels more confident that they might actually come back from this one. 

Besides, she really wants to catch this bastard. 

~

The plan, when they finish cobbling it together, is to tempt their mark with what they desperately want. A surviving Goa’uld symbiote. All that knowledge and power, plus immortality, it’s a heady prize for a man like their mark. There’s no question of who will play the Goa’uld. Despite her carefully worded doubts, Carter provides them with as much footage of Goa’uld queens in action as she can get without raising suspicion. While Sophie and Nate study the footage of Hathor and Nirrti, Osiris and Amaterasu, building the character of Laverna and her rather more demure host, Hardison spends some quality time with his visual effects software, until he can replicate the gold flash of the eyes well enough that not even Teal’c can see the join. After that its merely a matter of splicing together footage of Sophie in character and Carter using a hand device – Parker turns out to have previously stolen a kara kesh from somewhere, and retrieves it easily for them but once she’s seen it in action she’s quite happy to surrender it into Carter’s care - and some temptingly ‘botched’ hacking by Hardison and the trap is set. 

Once Sophie’s in character, she barely needs the coloured contact lenses to convince the mark that she is either an Ancient Roman goddess or a powerful alien. The footage sets the scene, but its Sophie’s presence that really sells the con. It’s a little unnerving to watch Sophie flip between one character and another as easy as breathing, with the mark watching. Normally, the whole point is that only the crew see her change character – Sterling can say what he likes, but he only got to see Sophie flip between quite so many characters in succession up close _because_ she was drunk, he’d never have got that close otherwise – but here, the opposite is true. It’s vitally important that the mark see the join, that he be distracted by the transition between personalities, so that he misses that Sophie isn’t _actually_ two people in one body. 

(Parker carefully puts a comforting hand on Carter’s shoulder as they watch Sophie weave her magic. Sophie’s inhabiting of the dual role is informed as much by her long conversations with Carter about being a host to Jolinar, as it is by the hours of footage of Goa’uld Queens she’s watched. As necessary as those conversations were, they’ve clearly opened old wounds for Carter, given her a brittle edge that Parker knows too well. Carter leans into Parker’s touch and everyone else gives them space and silently agrees never to ask what they talked about that left them both with red rimmed eyes but a little more settled in their respective skins.) 

Standing in the Gateroom twenty odd levels below ground, lit only by the shimmering light of the Stargate as it bursts into life. (Although the real destination is the Alpha Site where a squadron of SG troops are waiting alertly in case this all goes pear-shaped.) It’s hard for anyone involved in the con, that’s actually seen a Goa’uld in person, to remember that Sophie isn’t actually a host. There’s something utterly cold and remote about the way she looks at people in character as Laverna that makes her all too believable. 

In fact, even after the trap is sprung and the lights come up, the mark struggles to believe that he’s been conned. Even as he’s marched away by the SFs and he’s seen Sophie transform into yet another person, they can see him struggling with the truth. 

In truth, the mark’s boasting to his new Goa’uld friend has brought up more questions than answers. Those answers lie off world and that, as Nate concludes, is a job for the experts. They’ve got their mark, and their client will have closure. Their work is done here. 

Eliot hopes he’s right. 

~

Eliot isn’t quite sure who he’s expecting to walk through the door of his cell, but he’s mostly relieved when it turns out to be General O’Neill. (Definitely spelled with two Ls, Eliot’s met the other guy and he’s an utter jerk.) He’s always a little nervous around Generals, but mostly because he remembers the man Jack O’Neill was before the Stargate project. He’s the seen the man under the easy smiles and self-effacing humour. Whenever Eliot’s run into him in the past, he’s always had the uncomfortable feeling that O’Neill could see right through him. 

O’Neill settles into the chair across from Eliot and eyes him curiously for several long minutes. Eliot settles back in his own chair, copying O’Neill’s body language and posture, waiting and making it clear that he’s waiting and that he can wait for a very long time. 

“Spencer.” O’Neill says eventually.

“O’ Neill.” Eliot replies, 

“Good work there, Spencer. Unorthodox, but, as you know, we like unorthodox here. Well most of us do, those of us who have travelled through the gate anyway, know the value of taking an unorthodox view on things.“

Eliot watches O’Neill run on. It’s educational, watching someone that he knows, first hand, is a brilliant tactician whether in the field or on the chessboard, play the holy fool. Eliot knows all about the power of being underestimated, but it’s always a pleasure to watch a master at work. 

“I hate authority. _Especially_ now that I am authority. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get anything done? Now, Colonel, that was a good rank, enough power to actually get stuff done, but low enough down the food chain to still be able to actually do the things that need done.”

“Which is why you promoted Carter to Colonel as soon as you possibly could,” Eliot interjects. 

“You think she didn’t deserve it,” O’Neill asks, raising an eyebrow.

Eliot has a deep appreciation for competence and therefore an equally deep appreciation for the entirety of SG1. He’s also well aware that as a team they were incredibly close, that the military contingent of the team is as close as they could possibly be without breaking the fraternisation rules. He choses his words carefully. “I think Carter deserves anything she wants, and that seems a very… _you_ …gift to give someone whose judgement you respected.”

“Hmm, well,” O’Neill replies non-committedly, “speaking of people whose judgement I trust…”

Eliot braces for whatever he’s about to be asked or offered.

“I may need one last favour from you and your team.”

“You know, I can’t actually make that kind of decision on behalf of my team? For a start they aren’t _my_ team the way SG1 are, were,” Eliot corrects himself, “your team. And anyway, if you’re going to ask me what I think you’re going to ask, then that is definitely a decision we need to make together.”

“No, I understand that, hey, I discussed whether or not I should accept being offered the promotion to General, to run the SGC, with my team. I get it. But from what Carter and Teal’c tell me, it’s not as though one person on your team always picks the jobs? It’s common for one or other of the rest of you to find a client or an ‘injustice’ and bring it to the rest of them team?”

“Yeah,” Eliot admits.

“Alright then, just…hear me out, and know that I’m not asking you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself, I just can’t do it myself, so I’m asking you,” promises O’Neill.

O’Neill explains. The hell of it, Eliot thinks, is that he understands O’Neill’s reasoning. It needs a small sneaky strike team, and it can’t be done through official channels because admitting the possibility of any surviving Goa’uld threat – especially one linked to the Trust which a lot of people in the know in Washington would prefer to pretend had been neutralised - out there would utterly upset the international political applecart. If they were just asking him, he’d say yes in a heartbeat, but he isn’t just him anymore. Parker and Hardison have told him and shown him many times that three of them are a ‘we’ now. He doesn’t get to make these decisions alone anymore. And however scared and worried the thought of this decision makes him, knowing that he won’t be making it alone is inexplicably comforting. 

“I can’t…” Eliot pauses to consider how to phrase his response, knowing what’s resting on it, “I can’t ask that of Nate and Sophie. They never signed up for this, they were just helping us out on this job because we needed extra fire power and they like to keep their hand in.”

“They’re ‘retired’, right?” O’Neill asks, “though from what I hear, about as good at being retired as I am?”

“Something like that,” agrees Eliot.

“But the other two, the hacker and the jewel thief, you can ask that of them?” O’Neill continues shrewdly.

“More like they’d give me hell if I didn’t let them make that decision themselves,” admits Eliot. 

“Will you ask them then?” O’Neill presses. 

“Yeah, I will,” promises Eliot.

~

They travel back up to the surface in the lift together and its not until the doors open in the foyer in NORAD that Nate actually believes that they are really getting out of there. They say their goodbyes to the Cheyenne mountain staff, handshakes all round and a few hugs, and Sophie keeps talking as they go. Nate keeps feeding her lines as they go, letting her channel her nerves into her patter. There’s something wrong but he can’t quite put his finger on it, and keeping up with Sophie’s conversational fencing requires most of his conscious thought. They’re halfway along the corridor to the exit when he realises what it is, Sophie’s using her talking to the mark voice. She’s never stopped moving this entire time and she’s _never looked back_. She keeps pulling the others into the conversation as though she can pull them along with her. Sophie, he realises, is in full on, a con has gone wrong mode, she’s talking them out the door. Nate turns on his heel and looks back at the rest of the crew as he walks backwards and then he sees it. 

Eliot has stopped walking. Hardison and Parker have slowed almost to a stop but still moving, equidistant between Eliot and Sophie. 

“Sophie,” Eliot says quietly. Sophie stops, falling silent with an audible click her teeth. She doesn’t turn around, just keeps facing the exit ahead of them, gaze fixed on the horizon. 

“Eliot,” she replies, and her voice is a little terrifying now, a little of Annie Kroy bleeding through, in tone if not accent, “we are twenty feet from freedom, what do you have to say that can’t wait until we’re off this base? Because it better not be, what I think you’re going to say because if it is, I swear Eliot, I will…”

There was always going to be a price, Nate realises, he’d wondered what it would be and how it would be paid. He’d hoped it wouldn’t be this. 

“You swore an oath,” Nate interrupts calmly and feels the tension that’s hung over the crew all afternoon ease just a little. “They called that in.”

“Yeah,” Eliot agrees. There’s something else though, Nate can tell, because Eliot isn’t looking at Hardison and Parker, and they aren’t looking at Eliot, the three of them are looking at Sophie and him. Hardison and Parker aren’t surprised or upset about this development, they already knew. 

“You swore another oath,” Sophie tells him, still not looking round, using her own voice now, “you promised…”

“…’Till my dying day,” agrees Eliot, “I did. I will. But…”

“We made a pact.” Parker announces. And it isn’t Parker the thief talking, its Parker the mastermind. Nate forgets sometimes when they work together that this other Parker exists. She cedes the role to him so gracefully when they all work together again, but at moments like this Nate is reminded that Leverage is her team now. “We all change, we change together. When this kind of job comes for Eliot, they either take all of us or none of us, that’s what being a team means.”

“We’ve kind of got form here,” Hardison points out, “ we stopped that terrorist in Washington and there was the whole election in San Lorenzo. If not us, who?”

“You didn’t sign up for this,” Nate points out, not because he thinks it’ll change their minds, but because he feels it needs to be said, neither of the two of them signed up to put their lives on the line. 

“Fate of the world, Nate,” Hardison offers. 

Parker doesn’t say anything at all, but when she meets his eyes, her own gaze is steady and unyielding. Somewhere along the line they had made that choice. Maybe it was in a spy truck in Washington; maybe it was when he and Sophie had retired, but the three of them had come to the agreement that boiled down to: together or not at all.

So Nate does the only thing he can do, he takes Sophie’s hand and pulls her gently towards him. Letting her curl into him as he guides her round to face the rest of their crew. When she finally meets his gaze, he lets his fear and concern show for a long moment before he smiles at her. He doesn’t want them to do this any more than she does, but he knows with equal certainty that this is something they have to do. 

“Hardison does have a point, and how often do people like us get to save the world?” He asks her softly, not looking away from her until she can manage a tiny, reluctant smile.

When he looks back up at the other three, they have fallen into formation, Eliot having moved to stand just behind and between Hardison and Parker, and the other two having moved closer to him as if on instinct. Nate is suddenly sure that if they didn’t have an audience of soldiers and CCTV cameras, the three of them would be holding hands. 

“Come back safe,” Sophie demands of them and they nod, but they don’t say anything. Not making promises they might not be able to keep.

“Look after each other,” Nate adds, though he knows they will.

“And you,” Eliot replies. 

In their line of work, it’s the best they’ve ever been able to promise each other. It’s never felt quite so inadequate before.

~

In the shadowed gate room, the wormhole is the main source of light, casting everything and everyone there in a shimmering, blue light. Eliot always forgets how majestic and awe-inspiring a sight it makes between visits. It’s so old and so advanced, a reminder of both how tiny their planet is in the great scheme of things and how interconnected with the rest of the galaxy they truly are. He wonders if the regular gate teams ever get used to it, if it eventually becomes something that you get used to and take for granted. He hopes not, he hopes they always feel this strange joy and privilege every time they stand here. 

Parker is standing right at the event horizon, fingers brushing over its surface watching the particles die on her fingers. Uninhibited joy and excitement on her face, despite everything else she’s facing an adventure she can’t wait to embark on. Hardison is standing at her shoulder, talking nineteen to the dozen about the science involved and babbling a little, which likely means he’s not completely convinced this can be possibly be safe. Eliot mentally bets himself ten dollars that Hardison will throw up on the other side. 

Eliot is deeply grateful that he gets to – finally – share this with them. The two people he knows who would most appreciate it. He just wishes that the fate of the world weren’t hanging in the balance, even though he knows that’s the only reason they’d ever be standing here. 

He steps up to join them at the Gate, hearing the change in cadence that means that the adrenaline rush Hardison’s riding is in danger of tipping over from excitement into fear. He catches Parker’s eye and with only a shared mischievous grin as warning, they grab one of Alec’s hands each and pull him into the Gate with them.

Hardison doesn’t throw up, doesn’t even need to sit down for a bit, though he does grip the edge of the DHD a little tightly as he geeks out over it. Eliot is a little proud and a little disappointed.

(Nate would have thrown up. Sophie would look like she wanted to but after an exaggerated delicate shudder, he’s sure she’d manage to hold onto her dignity and her dinner. He can’t think about that too much.)

He doesn’t have long to waste on what ifs, he can see the faint glimmerings of pre-dawn light on the horizon, and they need to get moving while they have the advantage. This opportunity is too important to risk screwing up; this could be the only chance they get. 

~

The compound and the integral technology of the site are mostly Goa’uld, the guards are mostly human – Tau'ri to be precise – with a few Jaffa thrown into the mix – no single sect, Eliot notes, presumably an assortment of those still clinging to their old faith. However, all around the compound, systems have been broken open, patched and modified with technology from across the galaxy. 

It’s a bodge job. It reminds him of the off-world site that NID had run on Arbella back in the day – for all the money swilling about in these offshoot projects, most of it goes on bribes and corruption, very little makes it out to the staff on the front line. Sure, they throw money at the operations on Earth, but out here, cells like these are on their own. 

Eliot and Hardison have a great deal of fun using their rather more up-to-date information on the Trust’s situation on Earth, to taunt and sow discord between their supposed captors when they come to interrogate them. All the while distracting them from finding Parker as she sneaks around in the ducting, popping out to cause confusion and carnage, and more importantly to plant the virus Hardison and Carter had knocked up that will completely screw up their systems. (If they’d known it would be such a bodge job out here, Carter wouldn’t have needed to sneak them an interface to allow them to deploy the virus, they could just have used a standard USB stick.) It takes them approximately twenty minutes after Parker’s given the signal that the payload has been delivered, for them to break out of their cell and use it instead to lock up their former interrogators.

The rest of their escape from the base is somewhat less smooth, as they nearly get recaptured sending their Intel back through the Stargate so they have to resort to their Plan B of stealing a Tel’tak to rendezvous with _The Daedalus_ in a few days time, in another solar system entirely. 

~

The Tel’tak was damaged in the escape. It’s still space-worthy, thankfully, but a worrying number of the control crystals were damaged by a lucky/well-placed staff blast. Navigation is shot to hell and there’s no way of knowing how long their fuel will last. Handily when Hardison had broken them out of their cell, Parker had stolen the power crystals rather than destroying them, so she’s able to carefully extract the broken ones from their housing and replace them with the ones she stole. There’s nothing to be done about the rest of the damaged ones. They’re just going to have to keep going forward and hope that the Daedalus finds them before they run out of fuel. 

They can only hope that their message made it back to the SGC. That even now, the General is doing the equivalent of dropping a chopper full of pissed-off nineteen-year-olds on to some snakeheads. They are definitely a long way passed the time for subtlety. 

In the meantime, all they can do is wait and hope for rescue.

~

Something that no one tells you, but that Eliot thinks he should probably have realised before, is that space is cold. Especially when the heating in your space shuttle doesn’t work. In the defence of the shuttle, the heating may work, but they’ve no idea how to turn it on. Hardison’s been exploring the control systems cautiously, but he’s understandably reluctant to be cavalier with the ventilation, given that it also provides them with the air they need to breathe. Especially given that its labelled and programmed in a language of which he speaks about six words. 

So far he’s having more luck with the code than the labels – because code is code and maths is truly the universal language apparently – but in the meantime, they’re all a little chilly. 

There’s not a lot of space on a Tel’tak, but there are sleeping quarters, small bunks designed to allow the Jaffa crewing it to sleep in shifts. Half-way through their first shivery, restless night, Hardison breaks and drags his poor excuse for a mattress off the bunk and onto the floor, prompting Parker to do the same with her own. Eliot internally debates asking to join in, before just launching first his blanket and then himself from his upper bunk onto their half-built nest. It’s not like they’ve never found themselves faced with a double bed between the three of them nor all piled into one bed in as little clothing as possible to share body heat after being soaked through. Back in the day, long before Hardison and Parker had got together, the three of them had even had a bit of fun on occasion being friends with benefits in a triangular fashion. Sleep comes much easier in the tangle of blankets and limbs that build together, warmth and companionship more important for now than anything sexual or romantic. 

As time goes on they stop even pretending that they’re going to sleep in separate beds. It’s always hard when it’s just the three of them, for Eliot to remember where the boundaries are supposed to be. Parker in particular is terrible at knowing what the rules are, let alone following them. They’ve all blurred the lines between friendship and romantic, platonic and sexual relationships so much that anyone could get confused. At least that’s what Eliot tells himself every time a passing touch lingers too long, or one or other of Parker or Hardison drop a glancing kiss on him as they get up out of bed in the mornings. Mostly though, Eliot is just too tired and cold when Parker kisses him. He doesn’t want to push her away and so he doesn’t, and in return he gets a lap full of enthusiastically kissing Parker. It’s pretty tame by his standards of kissing, comfortable and familiar with no attempts to remove any layers of clothing. As though they do this all the time. 

“What brought that on?” He asks her quietly after the kiss has drawn to a natural end.

Parker shrugs, “I just wanted to kiss you. I mean, I often want to kiss you, but mostly you look like you’d shout at me if I did. But you didn’t look shouty, you looked sad, so I thought you might like to be kissed.”

It makes sense in a Parker sort of way. He was feeling a bit melancholy before she kissed him and he does feel a bit better for the kiss. He is, however, very aware of the fact that Hardison is sitting less than six feet away from them, engrossed in attempting to decipher the navigation system and that, Eliot doesn’t feel good about. 

“You know, it’s not because I don’t like kissing you that I don’t kiss you?” He asks. “I like kissing you, both of you actually, but the two of you are together now, and you’re not exactly a fan of other people so much as touching Hardison with intent, let alone kissing him. It generally works both ways.”

Parker nods slowly at him, “Alec and I agreed when we started dating that we wouldn’t kiss other people any more, unless it was for a job. But even then we avoid it, because it makes us unhappy to do it and to watch each other do it.”

“Right, so, you understand my surprise…?” Eliot suggests, still vaguely hoping for an explanation but increasingly resigned to not getting one. Or getting one that amounts to ‘we’re probably going to die.’

Understanding dawns on Parker’s face, “Oh. No. Silly Eliot, you’re not other people. You’re…” She gestures vaguely with her hands, clearly searching for a suitable term for all the things he is to them. Which is fair enough, Eliot supposes, he certainly doesn’t have a word for all the things they both are to him.

Carefully, Eliot extracts his arms from around her waist, and takes a moment to cover his face with his hands, so that he can collect his thoughts without having to look at her. 

“It doesn’t count as cheating if it’s me?” he asks, “I don’t think that’s as flattering as you think it is, there’s a reason I generally avoid threesomes with couples.”

“No,” Hardison interjects, “it doesn’t count as cheating if its discussed and agreed to beforehand. Neither of us are keen on an open relationship in general, I would go so far as to say that actually we have…uh…”

“Strenuous objections,” Parker fills in.

“Yeah, those. To anyone else. Even people that individually we’d be attracted to. No interest whatsoever. There’s only ever been one person we’ve been remotely ok with watching each other kiss,” Hardison insists.

“Just you.” Parker says softly.

“If you’d be into that. It’s cool if you’re not, no pressure, we’re good as we are,” Hardison assures him, “we just think the three of us could build something better together.” 

“We miss you, we thought, maybe you missed us too so…” Parker trails off with a shrug.

“And you didn’t think that maybe you ought to come out and say something about it to me…?” Begins Eliot before trailing off.

“We were just trying to sneak it up on you, so you wouldn’t freak out about having feelings and run away from us,” finishes Hardison.

“But then we were suddenly stranded in space and the timetable got moved up a little,” Parker continues. “What’s the point of a near death experience if it doesn’t make you seize the day? Make you reassess what’s important to you. Besides, Sam has a point, you can get used to almost anything. Even nearly dying on a regular basis. You survive certain death enough times you get blasé about your survival chances. Start thinking you’ll always have more time, but we won’t. It’d be terrible to loose you and think you never knew how much you meant to us. Even if you don’t want this then at least now you know.”

Parker’s terribly still in his arms, and Eliot knows that if he could bring himself to meet her eyes, her expression would be utterly serious too. This is the big demon that she had to face before she and Hardison could get together properly. How do you let yourself care for people when you know they’re going to die? He didn’t realise she’d taken Sophie’s advise about caring in the face of the risk of loss being what makes life worth living quiet so much to heart. That she’d taken it to its logical extension that she should love the people she cared for as hard as possible while she had them. That the prospect of dying made her cling more tightly to the people dear to her while she has them. 

He feels rather than hears Hardison move quietly over to join them, sitting down slowly and cautiously as though to avoid startling either of them. 

“We live dangerous lives, even when we aren’t flying through space trying to save the world,” Hardison points out, “and I’ve not doubt whatsoever that you’ll always put our lives above your own. And we appreciate that, more than we can say, so we do our best to make sure you don’t need to. But even if we all retired tomorrow, well not tomorrow, but say we make it back to earth and retired as soon as we did. You’re like a decade older than us, chances are we’re gonna outlive you. Damn right we want to keep you for as long as we can, in whatever way we can, however you’ll let us.”

Eliot offers his left hand to Hardison, Parker having stolen back his right one somewhere during along the way, and intertwines their fingers loosely. 

“Not just a sex thing then, huh?” He asks.

“I mean it’s a factor, but no that isn’t the only thing we want from you.” Hardison admits. 

“You can have other girlfriends if you like?” Parker offers, “or boyfriends. We’d rather keep you to ourselves, but I guess that’d be kinda selfish given the givens.”

She stops in response to the way Eliot’s hands instinctively clench around her and Hardison’s hands at that. After spending so long actively not thinking about wanting them, about wanting to wrap them up and keep them where no one can hurt them, finally allowing himself to accept the possibility of it is a little overwhelming. 

“I don’t…I can’t…” he tries, before stopping and taking several deep breaths, “I ought to tell you no, that you deserve better, that you have something special and you shouldn’t risk me, tainting it. But I don’t want to. I want to be yours; I want you both to be mine. I’m tired of pretending otherwise.”

It’s unexpectedly difficult to meet their eyes again afterwards, but the look of relief and delight on both their faces make it all worthwhile. It is far easier to help Parker pull Hardison in close enough that the three of them can hug properly.

~

It’s too cold, never mind that they didn’t exactly pack their supplies with this in mind, to get up to anything too adventurous on the Tel’tak. But curled up together in their nest of blankets, it’s surprisingly easy to find new and fun ways to be intimate despite that. Just knowing that he has explicit permission to watch Parker and Hardison kiss and touch is oddly liberating for Eliot. Allowing himself to feel the gamut of emotions he normally represses when he sees them kiss – from fondness and that warm glow at how good they are together, all the way through to arousal at how very attractive they are individually and together – is an unexpectedly heady feeling and he revels in indulging it. Letting them see what they do to him, and seeing the effect that that knowledge has on them. 

He’d forgotten, somehow, how much Parker laughs during sex, how much she revels in being touched by the very few people she wants to touch her and just how flexible she really is. He’s reminded, just how long Hardison’s limbs really are, how he always knows just how to pull Eliot’s hair and make it good and what it means to have Hardison’s undivided attention. Parker and Hardison for their own part, seem determined to show him just how good a team the two of them have become, so all he can is surrender to their attentions and simply enjoy both being at their mercy and how very good they both taste on his tongue. He’s had some truly spectacular sex over the years, but he’s reminded of just why he’d kept falling back into bed with them again and again. The way that things, which would be awkward and messy with other people, become funny and intimate with people that you share that level of care and knowledge of and about. 

The floor beneath the blankets is hard and the cold of space still does its best to seep into their bones, but somehow, in their tangle of limbs and blankets, there’s nowhere they’d rather be. As much as the whole situation still scares him on a bone deep level, this much remains true, he’d rather die here with them, than live anywhere else without them. And for the first time, Eliot allows himself to believe what they’ve been telling him in a thousand different ways over the last few years; that so would they. 

~

 _The USSS Daedalus_ is a fine spaceship, a miracle of human innovation and alien technology, and both the heating and the air-con work perfectly. However, it is a ship diverted from its mission and it’s got a full compliment of crew and only one guest quarters free. 

“I wouldn’t normally ask,” admits the lieutenant whose drawn the short straw of looking after them, “but I know from gate teams that after experiences like yours, they generally go in one of two directions in the first couple of days. Either they can’t get far enough away from each other or they can’t bear for each other to be out of their sight. But it’s just for tonight as we’ll have you at your destination in a few hours…”

“This is fine,” Parker assures them.

“We’ll be sleeping in shifts for a while yet anyhow,” Eliot confirms. 

“As long as that’s a real shower and it works, I don’t care anymore,” agrees Hardison. 

It is indeed a real shower and a real mattress on the bed. By the time they’re all showered, there is not even a pretence at sleeping in shifts as they all pile under the covers in a heap. 

Eliot manages to wake and be up and about early enough that they aren’t entirely obvious by the time their Lieutenant comes looking for them. But she seems unfazed either way, and Eliot supposes that she’s seen enough alien weirdness and odd trauma responses working for the Stargate programme that a post-mission puppy pile is probably perfectly normal to her. 

Eliot can’t quite decide if he’s relieved or not to be able to put off the inevitable conversation with the other two for a little longer.

~

The planet that _The Daedalus_ drops them off at is the kind that Eliot has rarely seen, but knows from mission reports makes up the majority of the planets with Stargates, temperate, heavily forested and weirdly reminiscent of rural British Columbia. Enough so that until the Stargate finally looms out of the trees, Parker and Hardison, both Illinois born and bred, are almost convinced that they are in Canada. 

The DHD is in perfect condition; just as promised, but still they take a few minutes to examine their instructions and device itself. Catching each other’s eyes and hastily looking away again, as they silently wonder about their reception, and if they might not be better off running somewhere, anywhere else. In the end when Hardison sighs deeply and starts dialling home, neither Parker nor Eliot stop him. The wormhole engages, their remote flashes green and with one last look back Parker grabs a hand each of the other two and they step together into the event horizon.

The gate room is almost deserted, it being the middle of the night on Earth, but Carter and Teal’c are waiting for them so they reckon they’re probably safe. It takes a moment, nonetheless, for Parker to let go of Hardison and Eliot’s hands. They can be fairly certain that if the intention were to shoot them now, it wouldn’t be the SGC’s flagship team they would send. It would take some pretty strong evidence and persuasion to get Carter and Teal’c on board with that, Eliot’s almost entirely convinced that as loyal as Carter and Teal’c are, both professionally and personally, to O’Neill, he wouldn’t ask them to do his dirty work for him, he’d be here himself. 

Nonetheless, it’s only sensible that Eliot moves ahead of the other two as they descend the ramp, so that he can provide as much cover to them as possible if things go wrong. 

“The forces of Colonel Johnson and his collaborators have been defeated,” Teal’c tells them once the wormhole behind them has disengaged. “A great deal of useful intelligence was collected in the process of neutralising their threat.”

Parker wrinkles her nose, “that’s military speak for tortured and killed them, right?”

Carter shakes her head solemnly; “We were able to take the base with minimal casualties, Tau'ri or Jaffa.” She brightens considerably when she continues, “fortunately we have no need to test our convictions about torture. Over the years we’ve refined our tactics so that we can successfully exploit their greed and ego to get them to tell us what we need to know. Those that rise to the position of System Lord are rather more cunning and challenging but with low level Goa’uld like these, its almost fun.”

“Those Goa’uld love to boast,” Hardison mutters.

“Indeed, they do,” concurs Teal’c.

“And afterwards, the Tok’ra will be able to remove the symbiotes from their hosts and they will be dealt with accordingly, while their hosts will stand trial for the crimes they committed pre-implantation as part of The Trust. Whether any of them will do time is another matter, but either way, this is a major blow to their off-world projects. It’ll take a long time for them to recover from this, and that’ll buy us valuable time for tracking down any further cells that might remain on Earth.” Carter’s smile is entirely genuine as she finishes, “saving the world isn’t always dramatic and glamorous, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be proud of yourselves.”

It’s not until Eliot sees the look of deep satisfaction on Teal’c’s face that he allows himself to truly believe that the threat has been fully neutralised and lets him focus on whether or not the three of them are getting out of the mountain to anywhere but a black site prison. 

“So what next?” Hardison asks tentatively.

“Standard post-mission procedures. An MRI and blood-work to make sure you haven’t picked up any unwelcome visitors on your travels, then you’ll be debriefed, after which transport will be arranged to take you to Peterson, where your plane tickets will be waiting.” Carter assures him. 

“And everyone can pretend we were never here,” concludes Parker. 

“More like, and no-one who might wish you harm or would like to erase your valued contribution to the recent crises needs to ever find out you were here,” Carter hedges. 

The three Leverage members nod their acceptance, they aren’t home free yet, but there’s an exit plan in place and they can improvise from there if they need to.

~

It’s not until they’re actually in the car that Nate and Sophie brought to collect them from PDX that Eliot actually believes that they’ve made it out. Even then he feels another level of tension seep out when they step into the brewpub and the only person waiting for them is Amy, just preparing to close up and delighted to hand off that task to them. With that release of tension, Eliot can feel the last few days beginning to catch up with him. He suspects he’s not alone in wanting nothing more than to crawl into his own bed and sleep for a long time, but he appreciates that Nate and Sophie have had a couple of weeks of radio silence to cope with. So the five of them end up slumped on various bit of furniture in the apartment above the pub, picking at a couple of takeaway pizzas that are more of an excuse to reconnect after their death defying adventures than actual sustenance. 

It was late when they got back and it keeps getting later without anyone making even an attempt at a move. They keep the anecdotes light and funny on both sides, there will be time enough to pick through strategies and figure out any loose ends that will be rather better tied up from their end rather than from Stargate Command. For now the conversation and banter is easy and comfortable, doing more to unwind them all than any amount of distance and security systems could manage. It’s so late that its almost early when Eliot feels Parker fall asleep on his shoulder, and he can almost see Nate’s eyes getting heavier but Hardison is in full flow, with Sophie interjecting energetically about something that Eliot really isn’t following anymore. He tells himself he’ll give it five more minutes before he moves but the last thing he remembers clearly is thinking that Nate must be really tired, he doesn’t normally look nearly as fond of them all when he knows he’s got an audience.

Usually Eliot would be the one to shake everyone else awake. Normally, he’d be slumped in an armchair while Sophie and Nate commandeer one sofa and Parker and Hardison the other. He’d have woken a little chilly and be urging Parker and Hardison off to whichever of their rooms they’re sleeping in this week, and calling a cab to get Sophie and Nate off home and keeping them distracted from noticing that he wasn’t heading upstairs himself. (To the apartment that Hardison had started to organise for him, but that he’d never got round to moving into once Eliot had admitted – to himself if no-one else – that both he and they preferred him in the spare room.) Eliot wasn’t sure why he’d been avoiding Nate and Sophie finding out that he shared an apartment with Hardison and Parker. Officially Parker didn’t live there, it would be easy to claim that actually he and Hardison were room-mates as a fiction for Parker until she was ready to admit she was living with Hardison. Yet somehow the three of them had arranged things so that it never came up. Perhaps the others could imagine, just as well as he could, exactly the expressions that Nate and Sophie – that little nod of Nate’s, Sophie’s elegantly raised eyebrow – would pull as they said ‘for Parker right, of course.’ 

But tonight, Eliot is on the sofa with Hardison and Parker, its enough effort to pull the throw off the back of the sofa and over them, to steal his foot back from under Parker’s leg. Sophie is watching his efforts through half-lidded eyes, expression fond and not remotely concerned. Somehow after everything he doesn’t have any trouble meeting her gaze, can’t bring himself to hide how he feels about these two from anyone else so important to them all, and her smile grows as if she can read his mind. She snuggles a little closer to a still sleeping Nate and Eliot tucks himself a little more closely in too. Nate can call his own cab tonight. 

They still need to have a serious, sit-down conversation about this whole situation, while they aren’t in imminent danger of death. However, Eliot suspects, that that conversation is more going to be about logistics – they definitely need a bigger bed if this is going to be a thing – and cover stories than, are we really doing this? There’ll always be another bad guy to con, and there’ll always be another threat lurking out there in space. No point borrowing trouble, better they just keep helping people the only way they know how, and keep taking care of each other along the way too. 

People like them aren’t supposed to get happy endings, but then people like them don’t get to save the world either. They managed one, might as well try for the other.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Ophidiophobia Job - Art Only](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936153) by [Glinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda), [IllustratedJai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IllustratedJai/pseuds/IllustratedJai)




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